


The Challenge Ring

by glorious_spoon



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Missing Scene, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 07:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17361623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: The marks appear early.





	The Challenge Ring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greygerbil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/gifts).



The marks appear early. He is still a weedy adolescent, not yet grown into a man’s height, the bare beginnings of a beard shading chin and upper lip, when he wakes to find pale lines like scars slicing down his shoulders. They look as though they ought to hurt, but when he prods at them gingerly, there’s only a low, burning heat like the embers of a banked fire.

His mother is pleased. Soul marks appearing so early means that the bond is strong. Even at fourteen, M’Baku is being trained to lead; a strong partner will only enhance his bid.

The years pass. He grows to manhood; his mother sickens and dies from a wasting illness that even the medicine of the Jabari cannot cure; he takes up her mantle and leads his people and still his soulmate does not appear.

The marks burn sometimes, a strange, distant heat. He has learned to ignore it. There are more important matters that demand his attention.

* * *

He does not think much of T’Challa the first time he meets him. A pampered princeling with hair that smells like scented oils, his body smooth and unmarked beneath the suit of vibranium armor that he always wears. He is a skilled fighter, but he is unused to fighting as a man. It is a bout that M’Baku can win easily.

He thinks that until he drives his spear into T’Challa’s flesh and feels his own body explode into agony. He might scream; he cannot tell. His soulmarks are burning. His grip goes slack, and T’Challa is moving with violent, graceful precision, the slick rocks beneath him and the sky above, the water rushing past them both as the prince pins him with a strong thigh at the brink of the falls and gasps at him to yield.

 _Your people need you_ , he says, something desperate sliding beneath it. He is warm and unyielding and his eyes are wild and M’Baku spits the taste of river water and blood from his lips and thinks:

_Oh._

Later, when T’Challa sinks gratefully into the arms of first Zuri and then his family, when his clear voice rises over the falls, his fists falling on his injured chest like it causes him no pain at all, later: M’Baku allows his Jabari to pull him upright, to thump his shoulders with wordless comfort. Someone retrieves his mask from the challenge circle. He leaves without a word to the new king.

The marks on his chest do not stop burning until he is halfway up the mountain, and even then, they ache when he prods at them.

* * *

It is not really so much later when T’Challa stands before him in his hall, steady on his feet and glowing with the unnatural vitality of the heart-shaped herb yet again. It is a much better look on him than that slack lifelessness when the Jabari fishermen pulled him from the shallows and hauled him up the mountain.

His body is swathed in dark linen, hiding the faint scar from M’Baku’s spear, which looks as though it is decades old instead of just a few days.

It hides the other marks as well, the pale lines down his shoulders and chest that were covered by paint the first time they met. M’Baku wonders if they burn him as well, but if they do T’Challa gives no sign.

“You know,” he says, half-smiling, “I could use an army as well.”

“I bet you could,” M’Baku says, and laughs.


End file.
